a glimpse into a Latter-day Saint, Charlotte Mason education

This Week: Making Room for Spontaneous Learning

This week we went to the zoo, attended the Tulip Festival, and of course, had our weekly art and gym co-op. A lot of our time was spent outdoors, playing and exploring, climbing and running. It’s easy to assume there wasn’t a lot of learning going on, but funny enough, with little to no effort on my part, a lot of learning still happened.

I failed to take very many pictures, but here are some highlights:

Fractions.

Charles built some towers with our cardboard blocks, and he started a conversation about how four blue blocks equal one red block, and how two green blocks are the same as one red.

Learning place value.

I had a moment of intuition: I planned on doing a certain activity, but felt it wasn’t right. We did some spontaneous math instead. While doing this work, Charles said, “I really like this.” Typically when he gets excited about something, he jumps up and down, or his voice increases in volume with enthusiasm—behavior that sometimes distracts from the work at hand. So when he just grinned at me, and simply verbalized his enjoyment by saying, “I really like this,” it made my day.

First, we grabbed our math blocks and some number cards. I made a number with the cards, and asked him to show with the blocks how many ones, tens, and hundreds were in that number. Then, he built the numbers himself, and read the numbers to me.

He didn’t want to bother with the math blocks after doing that a few times; instead he read the numbers and explained how many thousands, hundreds, tens, and ones were in the numbers. Over and over again. The bigger the better. It surprised me how quickly he caught on. And he absolutely loved it.

Let’s not forget about John.

I have been allowing John to handle more materials usually kept out of his reach. He loves doing this version of The Silence Game, and I find it helpful with teaching patience, concentration, and mindfulness.

The boys have had some beautiful interactions this week; they feed off of one another’s imaginations, and have great conversations. I am grateful they are such good friends. John is always eager to learn more from Charlie, and Charlie is a kind and patient teacher. Most of the time.